15 dic. 2008

If we took teaching, research, and service and broke it down a little further...

Both research and teaching, I argue, also involves a larger attempt to maintain general knowledge beyond the field as defined most narrowly. You might envision this as a series concentric circles, with your own field in the middle. Spanish poetry from a certain date to a certain date in the middle. All poetry written in Spanish in the next circle, whether in Spain or Latin American, and at any date--along with Hispanic literature of the same period in all genres, and the events of Spanish history. Further out would be French poetry, poetry written in English; music, art history, and an infinite number of other subjects. Something further out on the periphery might turn out to be closer to the center, as your interests shift.

There is another category of work that is not quite research or service or teaching: maintaining networks of people who are interested in similar subjects; relations with editors, publishers, writers, colleagues in your own and other departments, even other bloggers. Admittedly, I am not that good at that, precisely because my variety of interests brings me into contact with multiple networks. For some narrowly defined fields this is a bit easier, but our interests in Spanish mean that a lot of people sharing interests will be on the other side of the globe.

Páginas

Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."